Thicker than Water
by Scandalacious Intentions
Summary: AU. A series of prompted and connected one-shots focusing on the lives of the Lupins post DH, from 1998 to 2018. Lupin adjusts to a paid position, Tonks is still trying to bridge the gap between minx and mother, and Teddy is adjusting to being an elder sibling to a wide-eyed hellraiser.
1. Thicker than Water

**Disclaimer: I'm not Ms. Rowling, but I **_**do **_**like to play in her sandbox, torture her characters a little, and then go home and amuse myself with my own toys.**

**A/N: These little more-than-drabbles-less-than-oneshots are all based in a fic-verse I call "**_**Requiem**_**". You needn't have read the original story because this first chapter should serve as an introduction to both the fic-verse and the little family. It's AU in which Lupin and Tonks dodge Rowling's scythe. This one is **_**really**_** short, but others might not be. They'll vary in length. The prompts were given to me by friends, but if you have any, please feel free to share them and I'll get round to writing them. If I've not bored you senseless by now, congratulations.**

**Oh, and I **_**know**_** I shouldn't be starting something new. It's just that when someone suggested I link all the stories in this fic-verse together, I couldn't resist.**

**1. Thicker than Water**

_November 2001_

Teddy Lupin had been told that his sibling was going to be a brother. At three-years-old, this was not welcome news, but he had been coaxed into anticipation of a play-mate by his mother. She had told him that when his baby brother was old enough, they'd be best friends and he was looking forward to having someone smaller to boss around and take the blame.

So when his parents brought his two-day-old sister home, he was unimpressed. She took all of his mother's time and attention. His grandmothers fussed over her and brought her little gifts every time they crossed the threshold. He was constantly told by other people that his father was busy. In fact, the last time he had seen his father was two days ago and he was covered in flecks of yellow paint and there was a funny smell coming from the spare room, to which he was now denied access. He'd never had the urge to go inside it until he was told he was unofficially banned.

Almost as soon as he laid eyes on her, he decided he didn't like her. Girls, after all, were good for nothing. They wouldn't climb trees or play the right games. They tattled.

It's been over a fortnight and The Intruder is sleeping in the spare room – _her_ room. He's allowed inside now that the paint has dried, but never on his own. His mother sometimes offers to let him hold The Intruder, with supervision and help, but he doesn't want to. He wants to pretend she doesn't exist. Unfortunately, his parents refuse to play along. They are under her spell.

He creeps over to her cot. Though it is dressed with a white linen canopy, he peers through the bars. He can just make out the tuft of auburn hair against her pillow. The Intruder can't change her hair colour like he can. She looks nothing like him. She looks a little bit like Daddy, he supposes, but not much. Daddy is tall and this thing is a shrimp.

She yawns and squeezes her eyes tightly closed, but as she closes her tiny, very pink, very wet lips, she turns her gaze on him. Her eyes, he thinks, are like big black blobs. They are Daddy's eyes and he has Mummy's. He's never tried to change his eye colour before – at least, not that he can remember. Emma's – The Intruder's – eyes twinkle at him. Her lips pull up at the sides. She appears to be attempting a smile.

"I don't care," he whispers. "I still hate you."


	2. Seaside

**Disclaimer: See first chapter.**

**A/N: Taken inspiration from Bill Bryson's column "**_**A Day at the Seaside**_**" for this one.**

**They're written in present tense right now, but they won't all be. **

_2006_

Teddy is now eight. His little sister is four and still enchanted by every trip to the beach, but he's getting a little fed up of it. There are, after all, a finite number of holidays in which a good time can be obtained by burying your sleeping father face-first in the sand while your mother and baby sister paddle in the sea.

There are, of course, obvious benefits to living atop a cliff perched over a lonely sandy beach, but it does mean that the head of the household is unwilling to part with his money in relation to beaches in sunnier climes.

The sea air tastes salty and blows a little too heavily in their direction. It's very early in the year for a summer holiday, but May is the last month they can be sure of relative privacy. Even at eight, Ted cannot control his emotions and a small boy wearing only a balaclava to conceal a sudden change of hair colour and a pair of swimming trunks in the middle of July is far too suspicious.

Ted isn't a big fan of the beach anyway. They don't have to wear coats at this time of year, but it's still a little chilly on the coast. The whole family has been forced, by his father, into unsightly black rubber aqua-socks. His sister, being four, is the only person who can pull these off. She still looks goofy, but on a four-year-old, goofiness is cute. On an eight-year-old boy, it's pitiful.

"Dad, can't I take these off?"

"They're to protect you from Weaver fish."

Teddy frowns. "I've never been stung by a Weaver fish."

Lupin smiles smugly. "That's because you wear the socks."

"If I promise not to go in the sea, can I take them off?"

"No. They'll protect your feet against stones as well."

Teddy groans. "When can we go home?"

"We only just got here. If you don't want to go in the sea, there are other things we can do."

Teddy casts him a disparaging glance. "No thanks."

"All right," says his father, pulling out a battered paperback and turning to a dog-eared page. "If you change your mind, you know where I am."

It takes whole minutes of silence before Teddy reaches breaking point, aware that his father is absorbed in his book and not likely to feel the need to end the awkward silence.

"So, let's say I _did_ want-"

Lupin grins and abandons his book atop the wicker picnic basket. "Come on then." He drags his son to his feet, far more excited by the idea than Teddy. "Dora, keep your eye on the basket."

"And just who do you think is going to steal sandwiches?" she calls back to him, but he's already disappeared behind the cliff-face.

"I used to come here when I was your age," says Lupin.

Teddy wonders why. The cliff-face is black and looming ominously above him, jutting out at the very top as though providing a cover. The sea, a shade of deep blue that hints at hidden depths, crashes against the rocks they're standing on. It's a dire landscape.

"What's so special about it?" asks Teddy.

Lupin looks up to the cliff-top, but says nothing on the subject. "Look down."

Teddy gasps, realising he is standing beside a small pool of water teaming with life. Some things he's never seen before.

"That's a sea anemone," says his father, pointing at a collection of pale green tentacles. "It looks like a plant, but it's got a head hidden in there." He kneels beside the rock pool and gestures for Teddy to do the same. "See all those empty shells down there? They'll be picked up by hermit crabs and made into homes."

Teddy grins. "Cool. So how do they get here?"

"The sea brings them. Every day when the tide comes in, something new will be deposited here when the tide goes out. And if it's a fish or a crab then it'll probably be sent back out to sea again when the tide comes in."

"So tomorrow, none of this will be here?"

Lupin smiles at him. "The shells will be and probably the sea anemone. Obviously the plants that grow here will stay, but other than that, no. They're all different every time you look inside them. This fish won't be here, but the crab might be. He's called a Velvet Swimming Crab. Look at the blue marks on his legs. Watch out for him. They're quite aggressive. I was pinched by one once." He holds up the index finger of his right hand where a small scar is now barely visible. "I ran screaming all the way home and my dad had to cut his pincer off."

Teddy is horrified. "What happened to him?"

Lupin decides not to tell him that his mother cooked it. "No idea," he says. "I think he went on to lose all his money in poor speculations on the stock market and moved to Spain. Haven't seen him since."

Teddy rolls his eyes. "_Dad_."

"Come on. It's lunchtime and I don't know about you, but I don't trust the girls with sandwiches and sand."

Teddy grins and gets to his feet, taking hold of his father's hand – something he doesn't really do anymore. When he thinks about it, it's been a very good day – even if it's just another day at the seaside. Of course, after lunch, his sister is going to make him collect shells with her and he'll still be wearing the black rubber aqua-socks, but there are worse things in life.


	3. Habit

**Disclaimer: See first chapter.**

**A/N: It's a filthy habit and one I don't recommend. You can go from "I only smoke when I drink" to shaking at the bus stop in a matter of weeks. This prompt came from my dear friend, who is my basis for this wonderful man and who is trying to knock the habit and has been for quite some time.**

**3. Habit**

_2013_

Before she even opens the door, Tonks knows it's a mistake. She can smell the tobacco from the landing. He's turned the spare room – what should have been their son's room had he not rejected it in favour of a studio-flat in the attic – into an office for use during the Easter holidays when he has mock-exams to mark. It is still painted the same duck-egg blue colour he had chosen for his son before the child was even born. His nursery furniture still rests in the corner of the room. She clutches the packet of cigarettes in her hand and taps her palm with them, wincing as she wonders how to phrase her concerns.

Tonks takes a deep breath and opens the door. Lupin is sat at the desk in the far corner, beside the window which looks out onto the cliffs. Her eardrums are assaulted by the clicking of typewriter keys as he types out his notes and lesson plans. He hits them too hard, too deliberately with his right hand, cursing under his breath as he spots a typing error. In his left hand he holds a quill, and most of his attention is devoted to the essay on the desk. In his mouth, balancing precariously as he breathes out, is a cigarette which has almost burned to the filter. He sits in a haze of smoke.

"You said you were going to give up."

Lupin jumps and stubs out his cigarette. "I have."

Tonks raises her eyebrows and coughs deliberately. She strides toward him and Lupin leans back in his chair, unaware that he is cowering. He breathes a sigh of relief when she flings the window open and steps back.

"Really? You've given up, have you? Well I hope you have some other explanation for the smoke that was billowing so far down the corridor that I thought maybe you'd started a small fire."

Lupin laughs and lights another. "I've given up recreational smoking. I gave it up years ago."

Tonks glares at him. "Yes, and took up chain smoking instead."

Lupin stubs the newly lit cigarette out, sighing irritably. "I'm not chain smoking."

Tonks pulls the rocking chair out from the corner of the room and turns it so she is sitting on the opposite side of desk, vaguely aware that she looks ridiculous. "You know, they say you should give up by the time you're thirty if you want to reduce health risks and…well, you know, you're not getting any younger."

"Why do you think I chose 1990?"

Tonks rolls her eyes. "Remus, you were still smoking when you met me."

"Yes. This is how I react to stress."

She lays the packet on the table. "Where do you think I found these?"

Lupin shrugs. "They're not mine."

"Exactly." Tonks makes a face at him – a face he knows she has previously seen on his mother. "I know you know he smokes. So what are you going to do about it?"

Lupin sighs and sets down his quill. "What do you expect me to do about it? What can I possibly say to him? If he wants to smoke, he will."

"He's not even legally allowed to buy them yet! They were in his school trunk so someone's obviously buying them for him." She sits forward in her seat. "And I think it's obvious he's picked it up from you."

"_Me_? What about _you_?"

"I gave up for good when I was pregnant with Emma. Ted was three. You think he's picked it up from me, do you?"

Lupin resigns himself to the truth. "Dora, I'm his father. I wear cardigans and bake apple pies. Nothing I ever do will be cool in that boy's eyes." He knows he's lost the battle when he meets her blazing eyes.

"I don't give a toss," she says, her smile unable to reach her eyes. She gets to her feet. "Give me your cigarettes."

Lupin only looks at her, his eyes shifting between hers and her outstretched palm.

"I said give me your cigarettes." She sighs, one hand on her hip, and he knows she's not going to leave him in peace until he gives them up. "If you don't give up, how are you supposed to set an example? Now hand them over."

Reluctantly, Lupin does so. "I really need to finish this. I'll go up and see him in about fifteen minutes, OK?"

Tonks nods. "I'd kiss you, but you taste disgusting." She pushes the rocking chair back into its corner and blows him a kiss from the doorway. "I mean this. Thank you."

Lupin returns to his work, discouraged by the separation from his stress-reliever and his poor typing skills – though he blames this entirely on the use of his non-dominant hand. He reaches for one of his son's and lights it, inhaling deeply.

Almost immediately, he splutters and stubs it out.

"Vile," he mutters, seemingly aiming the remark at his mother's typewriter.

"Ted?"

Teddy's attic bedroom is long and narrow. Both Lupin and his son have to stoop slightly to move around it now that Teddy has grown to be six feet tall. He knows that Teddy is going to be taller than him eventually – probably sooner rather than later. Even his twelve-year-old-daughter has inherited the statuesque build of the Blacks. He's glad they're having this talk now, before he has to look up to lecture his son.

"Yeah?"

Unsure how to begin, Lupin waves the cigarette packet and nods toward the sofa pushed up against the wall. "Shall we sit down?"

"Oh. They're Tom's."

Lupin raises an eyebrow. "Ted, I was cleaning the gutter the other day and I found your cigarette butts. I know you've been leaning out of the window and throwing them where you think no-one will find them because that's exactly what I did to avoid this little chat with my own father. I didn't get off that easily and neither will you."

Teddy groans. "Look, Dad, you smoke, I smoke. Can we just keep this from Mum? I'll promise never to smoke again and you'll know I won't be caught again and we'll leave it at that, OK?"

Lupin shakes his head. "Ted, aside from the moral objections I'd have to such an arrangement, your mother gave me these."

"Fuck."

"_Ted_!"

"Sorry." Teddy takes a seat opposite his father, choosing to sit on his bed. "So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to tell you what my father told me."

Teddy laughs. "Didn't work, did it?"

"Right." Lupin leans back in his seat, leisurely crossing his legs. "I don't like your language, I don't like your tone, I'm not fond of this habit either, and I certainly don't like the way you talk to me. So, the way I see it, you have two choices. You can apologise and then shut up and listen, or you can be grounded without pocket money for the rest of the term. Ball's in your court, Ted."

Teddy rolls his eyes and makes a disparaging sound in the back of his throat. "_Sorry_."

Lupin gets to his feet. "All right then."

Teddy reaches for his father's wrist and wraps his fingers around it. "Dad, don't-"

Lupin turns. "Are we going to sit down and discuss this like adults or am I going to have to treat you like a seven-year-old?"

Teddy retreats to the end of his bed and stares down at his odd socks. Lupin sits on the arm of the sofa so that they're at an equal height.

"Though I don't know many seven-year-olds with a twenty a day habit," says Lupin, trying to provoke a smile. When he does not receive one in response, he decides to go ahead regardless. "Listen, Ted, until you're eighteen, you're not even allowed to buy these so who's been buying them for you?"

Teddy merely looks at him.

Lupin shifts his weight in his seat. "What? Don't look at me like I'm a moron. Who's been buying them for you?"

"I'm a metamorphmagus, Dad. _I've_ been buying them for me. The man who sold them to me thinks I'm a ninety-two-year-old veteran. I even bought a cardigan. I've been reading up on Dunkirk for the role."

Lupin, despite himself, laughs. "I think you're the only person I know who can honestly say that smoking has furthered their education." He sighs. "Look, Ted, when you're eighteen, you can do whatever takes your fancy, all right? My dad told me that while I lived under his roof and while I was legally underage, I was his property. He had made me. My lungs were technically his lungs. He told me that if I damaged any of my organs, he was going to write me out of his will. He said, 'After all, Remus, what's the point in having children if they can't give you a kidney when yours packs in?' He smoked half the packet with me and told me that if he caught me with them again, he was going to have 'Property of J.Q. Lupin' tattooed on my forehead above my date of birth."

Teddy frowns. "Q?"

"Quartinus."

Teddy snorts with laughter. "Jesus. And I thought Remus was bad."

Lupin raises an eyebrow. "You thought Remus was what?"

"Nothing."

"Good." He grins. "And now I am going to sit here and watch you smoke every last one of that disgusting brand of cigarettes and then you're going to promise me you won't light up again until you're eighteen." A small blue flame erupts from the palm of his hand and with it, he lights his son's cigarette. "I don't even care if you're sick; you're getting through the packet."

Teddy is not sick, but with two cigarettes left, he looks it. He leans against the windowsill, inhaling clean air.

"All right, Dad, I get the point."

Lupin hands him a slightly warm bottle of water. "Good. Sip it slowly."

Teddy gulps down mouthfuls of water and smiles weakly as he hands the empty bottle to his father. "Sorry."

"Feeling better?"

Teddy nods. "What's going to happen to the other two?"

Lupin lights them. "Right, this is it. This is our last cigarette. We're giving up smoking."

"_We_?"

Lupin nods and pushes the window as far as it will open. Both he and his son lean out of it, elbows resting on the windowsill, cigarettes placed between fore and middle fingers. "Yes, Ted. _We_."

"Dad, look, since I have been old enough to understand you, you have been announcing at the table that you're quitting so…"

"The difference between us, Ted, is that I have an addiction. I started smoking with James when I was fourteen and I never really stopped. Peter didn't like the taste of them and Sirius was the only genuine social smoker I have ever heard of. He could take or leave them, but James and I were hardly ever seen without one and most of our bonding was actually done leaning out of windows and praying to almighty God that our parents or our teachers wouldn't see us. I think our habit thrived because we both had a smoking friend. If anyone asked us to go outside to smoke, we weren't social pariahs. We didn't have to stand outside alone in the rain wishing we could join the party, you know? James was one of those people who didn't need to join a party. James was a living, breathing party. So I never missed anything. Let me tell you something, James had the sort of accent that could pull off a bit of a rasp. I didn't. I sounded like I was recovering from a tonsillectomy. Now I smoke when something's bothering me or something's difficult. That's become my addiction. That's why I find it so hard to give up. Social and recreational smoking is easy to knock on the head, but if you start to treat yourself to a cigarette or start to use it as a crutch, it's a slippery slope. I started to smoke when I was on edge or when I couldn't sleep because James was murdered. What's your excuse?"

Teddy stubs out his cigarette. "Well, compared to that, I'm never going to have one."

Lupin grins. "That was the general idea." He flicks his cigarette butt into the gutter with a grace that only comes with four years practice. "And I mean it this time. If that's what it takes to get you to stop before you end up like me – literally burning your money – then that's what I'll do."

"Dad?"

"Yes?" replies Lupin, leaning forward to close the window against the evening breeze.

"Can I ask you something?"

Lupin pockets the empty cigarette packet. "Technically you already have."

"Well, can I ask you another one?"

"Fire away."

Lupin pulls down the sleeves of his cardigan and shivers slightly. The attic needs insulation if Teddy is going to make this arrangement permanent – insulation or a far cheaper warming charm, but that won't keep out the worst of the elements.

"What are you so worried about all the time?"

Lupin's head shoots downward from the rafters and he meets his son's eyes. He can't quite grasp the boy's genuine confusion.

"Lots of things, Ted."

"Lots of things like what?"

Lupin sighs. "Lycanthropy and-"

"You smoke because you're a werewolf?" Teddy grins. "Come off it, Dad. Seriously, I mean don't let it get out, but I think you're the coolest man I've ever met and you know we all think you're the best teacher we have and you know you're funny and you know you're too clever to be allowed and you know that me and Emma and Mum love you. So what are you worried about?"

Lupin can't hold back the beaming smile. "Nothing."


	4. Storm

**Disclaimer: See first chapter.**

**A/N: Guess what the weather's like.**

**4. Thunder**

_2006_

Emma runs in without knocking and Teddy wakes with a gasp. In the darkness, she is a small figure against the door and he wonders if goblins have taken to house-breaking. The rain beats against his window, the wind hammering so hard that he's worried the pane might smash.

"Hel-hello?" he stammers.

"Teddy?"

Her voice is small and almost inaudible against the storm raging outside.

"What do you want, Pipsqueak? You just gave me the fright of my life!"

Emma pads across the room, her steps silent on the wooden floor in her yellow socks. They clash with the pink of her pyjamas. "There's thunder."

Teddy groans. "Go and wake Nana up."

Their parents are holidaying privately in Prague, leaving Andromeda in the role of live-in babysitter. Emma is both a little in awe of her and absolutely terrified of her. Her father is always understanding, having had the same fear as a child, but she knows her mother rolls her eyes and that Andromeda will probably think she's ridiculous and send her back to bed.

Emma frowns. "No. Can I sleep in your bed?"

"No."

Ignoring him, she climbs in, wrapping the duvet around her and nestling into his pillow. Teddy only gawps at her.

"Thank you, Ted."

"I said no. You can't just get into bed with people who say no. You get sent to prison."

Emma's frown lines deepen. "Well, _you_ can't tell your little sister she can't get into bed with you when there's thunder outside or _you'll_ be sent to prison."

Teddy raises his eyebrows. "Oh really?"

"Yes. It's the law."

Teddy sighs. "Do _not_ wriggle. You wriggle and you're straight out of this bed."

Emma pulls the duvet up to her chin. "I don't wriggle."

"Em, you are a serial wriggler. Now lie still and shut up." He turns over in bed, remembering sharing his bed with a wriggler when he himself was Emma's age and scared of the dark. He wonders why his mother puts up with it.

Just as he's drifting off to sleep, thinking that his sister is unusually compliant with his wishes for a peaceful night and leg without bruises, she shrieks at the sound of the thunder clap and grips his arm with her short stubby fingers.

"Ouch! Emma, let go. Let _go_."

Emma does as she's told, whimpering next to him like he's kicked her. Teddy sighs and with a roll of his eyes, throws back the covers and kneels beside the bed, pulling out a cardboard box from underneath it. He rummages through it in the dark and laughs almost triumphantly as his fingers find the fabric spines.

"Here," he says, holding the powder blue plush dragon out to her. "This is Toby. He used to stop me being scared."

Emma giggles. "Toby the dragon?"

Teddy shoots her a look. "Yeah. Toby the dragon. Anyway, be nice to him. Don't jab your fingers in him or anything." He climbs into bed and shuffles as far away from her legs as he can. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," she murmurs. "I love you, Ted."

Teddy doesn't answer her for a little while. He tells himself he doesn't like her every time she tattles on him or eats the biscuit kept back for him or every time she doesn't do as he says, but she climbs trees with him and follows him about the house like a short and girly shadow. Teddy beams up at the ceiling.

"I love you too, Pipsqueak."

But she's asleep. Teddy can't help but see this as the crowning achievement of his life thus far. His smile grows slowly broader until he feels the mattress shift beneath him, the pillow slide slowly out from under his head, the duvet roll over his body until it covers less than half of him.

"Are you wriggling?"

Emma says nothing, but the creak of the mattress as she tosses and turns in her sleep, answers for her.

"I knew you would."


	5. Language

**Disclaimer: See first chapter**

**A/N: Well, hasn't it been a while? I'm really sorry. November was all about my own novel and then December was full of assignments, but I'm back for the holidays. I want to thank everyone who reviewed, who favourited, who put this on alert. You reminded me I had to come back to it. It's nice to know there are people out there who want to remind me. So thanks.**

**This is a short one, but the others will be a little longer.**

**5: Language**

"What does that mean?"

Emma is six and her brother is easily infuriated by her at this age. He is nine, but he reads books he probably shouldn't be reading until he's a teenager. His grandmother is teaching him Italian. He knows he is clever. Too clever for his own good, his grandmother tells him. 'Just like your father' makes him beam with pleasure.

Teddy sighs and rolls his eyes. "Opstay ingaskay upidstay estionsquay."

Emma frowns. "And _that_. What does _that_ mean?"

They're sitting on the floor of Emma's bedroom, leaning against the cupboards of her cabin bed. The walls are painted bright yellow – a colour that clashes furiously with the purple curtains and blankets she chose last year.

Professor Lupin Jr. is attempting to privately tutor his sister in Pig Latin.

"Ems, come on. You need to know this stuff. Nobody will know what we're saying. It'll be our secret language. That sounds cool, doesn't it?"

Emma nods, jaw dropping in awe of her brother's genius.

"Right. Osay ou'llyay eednay otay earnlay isthay anguagelay."

Teddy watches her eyes widen and wonders how anyone is supposed to distinguish between the colour of her eyes and her pupils.

"So you'll need to learn the language," he says, answering her unasked question. "Right. What you do is you take the first letter off a word and put it on the end of the word. Then you add 'ay'. Implesay."

Emma nods slowly. "Implesay."

"That's good! That's brill! Owhay boutay ryingtay…" He frowns. "How would we say 'it'?"

"Let's ask Mummy."

Teddy glares at her. "Don't be silly, Emma. How can we have a secret language if Mum knows what it means? God, girls are so stupid."

Emma frowns and very slowly phrases her reply. "M'ihay otnay tupidsay."

Teddy grins. "Upidtsay."

"No, you are!"

Teddy sighs. "That's not what I meant. You're not upidstay. You're pretty everclay for a girl."

Emma's eyes dart to one corner as she thinks her through her response. "Hanktay ouyay."

Teddy beams. "God, this is going to be great."

* * *

Breakfast time at Sleepy Cottage is anything but sleepy. The children squabble half-heartedly, owls swoop through the windows, and their mother is a blur in a red coat, searching for lost paperwork.

On the rare occasions that their father is home from work, usually after full moons and a weekend here and there, he is put in charge of bacon and eggs, Tonks' things have been gathered together the night before, and they are all made to sit and eat as a family.

Wiser decisions have perhaps been made, but Remus Lupin is determined to turn a blind eye to his family's failings and slowly sculpt his home life into an episode of _The Waltons_.

"Iay atehay iedfray gegay," Teddy mutters, breaking the yoke with his fork and pushing it around his plate.

His sister waits for their father's attention to be occupied elsewhere before hurriedly gesticulating for Teddy to swap his plate. They do so with practiced speed, decidedly smug at their con-artist abilities.

"You know, Ted," says Lupin, his eyes still on the eggs he is frying for their mother, who has opted out of Sunday breakfast on the grounds of a hangover, which she is not ready to admit to her pre-teen children, "if you don't like fried eggs, just tell me and I'll scramble yours in future."

Emma, her mouth still full of egg-white, begins to ask how he knows this, but the pained expression on her brother's face is enough to force her to swallow.

"You're not the first to try to pull a fast one in Pig Latin," says Lupin, smiling smugly as his children's shoulders slump. "Not only did I try it, but I work in a school."

Teddy waits for his father to close the door behind him before turning to Emma. "Right. We're going to need a new language. Pig Spanish, there's a thought! Olahay! Uenasbay ochesnay."

Emma stares at him as though he has sprouted an extra head.

"Slightly limited by the fact that neither of us can speak Spanish, I know, but we can learn, can't we?" He glances across the table at her. She continues to stare at him as though he is out of his mind. "God, just hurry up and be nine."


	6. Crush

**Disclaimer: See first chapter.**

**6: Crush**

_2014._

"Daaaaaaad?"

Lupin, elbow-deep in dishwater, hums his response.

"Um…that was really nice. I mean, you know, I liked it. So cheers."

His Pasta Genovase had not been well received by his wife and daughter, who rejected his potatoes and pasta. The fact that his son, motivated by carbohydrates, enjoyed it does not surprise him. It's his tone.

"What do you want?"

"Ever the cynic," says Ted, a smile pulling at one side of his lips. He leans against the kitchen counter. "Dad, can I talk to you?"

Lupin nods. "About?"

"Well…" Teddy shifts his weight awkwardly and casts an anxious glance toward the door leading into the living room where his mother and sister sit in front of the fire. "Look, there's this girl…"

Lupin abandons his dishes and, reaching into an oak corner cabinet, pours himself a large measure of whiskey.

"Dad, can I have one?"

Lupin rolls his eyes. "Get yourself a glass. You can have a _small_ one."

Teddy grins as his father pours him only a slightly smaller measure than his own. "You're so cool."

Lupin laughs. "Indulge me. Can you repeat that? Maybe I can try to get it on record."

"No."

"You know," says Lupin, smiling to himself, "Sirius will never be dead while you are alive."

Teddy beams. He tries not to let it show, but he enjoys being compared to Sirius – a larger than life character in his father's past who he desperately wants to live up to. Told that he is very similar in appearance, Teddy has taken to wandering around the family home in his natural form, studying his father's school photographs for inspiration. Sirius chewed gum. Now, so does Teddy – so often, in fact, that his jaw is almost in perpetual motion. He doesn't quite pull off Sirius' casual arrogance, but he's working on it.

"I'm trying to remember what my father told me."

Teddy has been told many stories about his grandfather. His grandmother tells them with an indulgent smile, his father with considerably less tolerant affection.

"He said, 'You can't force a girl to fall in love with you, but you _can_ stalk her until she's too afraid of you to turn you down.' Don't do that, for starters. The cardinal rule of sitting down with my dad was never, under _any_ circumstances, follow the advice he gave. So I don't really have a script to work from. What's her name?"

"You don't need to know that, Dad."

Lupin rolls his eyes. "I'm not going to stick my oar in, Ted. I had enough of that when I was your age. I wouldn't have had my father any other way, but you have no idea."

Teddy laughs, but he doesn't relent.

"OK, here's an idea. Why don't you talk? I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

Teddy sighs. "I think maybe she might sort of…you know, I think maybe she likes me too."

"Well that's good, isn't it?"

"I don't know. Maybe she doesn't." Teddy picks at a piece of loose skin around his bitten thumb nail. "What would you do?"

"Jesus, Ted, wrong person to ask."

Teddy's eyes shoot up to meet his father's. "What did you used to do then?"

"Nothing." Lupin shrugs. "Look, my friends were all attractive. James had a smile which could probably have won prizes and he was our Quidditch captain. Girls went mad for James. Sirius literally had his pick of the female population. Peter had that blonde and blue eyed combination and he found it easy to talk to girls. I just fell a bit short really. I couldn't think of anything that made me attractive so I couldn't even contemplate the idea of someone being interested in me. I mean, even your mother-"

Teddy makes a face. "Yeah, I'm going to stop you there."

"I'm useless at this sort of thing. I never made the first move so I don't know how to advise you."

Teddy frowns. "Great."

As his son gets to his feet, rolling his eyes, Lupin has never felt such a failure. He knocks back the contents of his glass and, realising Teddy now knows where he keeps his whiskey, finds a new hiding place for the bottle.

"Do you remember when you were at school and you had crushes on boys?"

Tonks has burrowed under the duvet and nestled into her pillow. "_What_?"

Lupin lies on his back, staring intently at the ceiling, even in the darkness, too afraid to meet his wife's eyes should she turn over. "What did you do? I mean, to get their attention."

Tonks yawns. "What do you want to know that for?"

"Ted."

"What does Ted want to know that for?"

Lupin sighs. "Don't tell him I told you, but I think he's going to ask a girl out and um…he wants to know whether she's interested before he does, and I don't know what to tell him so I wondered if there were any generic sort of signs?"

Tonks rolls over to face him, though he continues to lie flat.

"Tell him if he's anything like you, she'll get so frustrated she'll end up writing it on his face." She stretches to kiss his cheek and almost immediately falls asleep.

From across the hall come the faint sounds of music a little more middle-of-the-road than Ted's preferences, and Lupin gets to his feet.

"Is that my copy of _The White Album_?"

"It might be."

"Can I come in?"

Emma opens her bedroom door. She is dressed in her pyjamas, but clearly has no intention of going to bed. She leans on the door frame. "Do you want me to turn it off?"

"No, it's fine. I can barely hear it."

"Oh, OK, cool."

Lupin winces. "Can I talk to you?"

Emma's eyes widen. She thinks very carefully before answering, "What about?"

"Boys."

"Goodnight, Dad."

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit."

The knock at the door startles him. It's firmer than his father's usual three short taps. This is a real knock and it terrifies him because his sister doesn't seem to believe in knocking and just strolls in whenever she feels like it.

"Mum?"

"I brought you some tea. You haven't come down all day."

Ted tentatively opens the door, attempting to hide the thick, green-hued smoke collecting in the far corner of his room.

"Thanks."

He tries to close the door quickly, but Tonks blocks it with her foot. "What's that?"

"Nothing. Cheers for the tea."

"Doesn't look like nothing. It looks like a lot of green smoke. So what is it?"

Teddy keeps his room like a shrine. His friends laugh at him because he rolls his socks into pairs and dusts the beams of his attic ceiling. His mother raises her eyebrows.

"Last time I was in a teenaged boy's bedroom, it wasn't quite like this."

Teddy frowns and shrugs.

Tonks locates her son's cauldron at the foot of the bed. "What happened to not doing magic in the school holidays?"

"Well, Potions isn't really magic, is it? As far as the Ministry's concerned, you might just be brewing a potion in the attic." He widens his eyes and makes contact with hers. "Come on, Mum. I have the O.W.L. to sit when I get back and I need to work at it. I mean, _look_ at it."

Tonks laughs. "Do you want to know what you're doing wrong? You're stirring it anti-clockwise."

"Really? That's it?"

Tonks nods. "Yep."

"Thanks."

She makes herself comfortable on the sofa across the room. "Now, about this girl."

"_What_? How do _you_ know about that?"

Tonks raises an eyebrow. "Please. So how many girls does she hang around with?"

"Oh, about three-hundred-and-twelve."

"And when you walk past, does she laugh?"

"I hope not."

Tonks rolls her eyes. "Not _at_ you, you dolt. _For_ you. Does she draw attention to herself?"

Teddy shrugs.

"Does she join the same societies you do?"

"Some of them."

Tonks nods. "Ask her out. Just trust me."

Teddy frowns. "Look, if she turns me down, I have to face her all the time. She's in _all_ my classes. She's in my _House_."

His mother shrugs. "If she's doing it for all the wrong reasons, just keep at her. Take me and you dad for instance. If she turns you down because she's not interested, move on. You take after my side of the family. You're a Black. Physical attractiveness is your birth right. Enjoy it." She grins and reaches up to kiss his cheek. "And no more secret potion brewing."


	7. Inheritance

**Disclaimer: See first chapter.**

**A/N: I know this is super fast. I will stop soon, I promise. I have essays to write. It's just that JaffaBrain197's review got me thinking, and I was sat with my grandmother today when **_**this**_** happened:**

**7: Inheritance.**

_2006_

He's starting a new job next month. This thrills him every time he repeats it to himself. He thought he would never have the luxury of handing in his notice to work somewhere else. He never thought he would land a teaching job again. Now, Lupin's days are spent with his head in a textbook, his nights lying awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if his wife will wake up if he puts his head back in the textbook.

His eight-year-old son sits opposite him, eating his way through half the fruit bowl.

"I was going to make crumble with those raspberries," says Lupin, not looking up from his book.

Teddy shrugs and finishes the last of them. "Can't you pick some more?"

"I haven't really got time, Ted."

Teddy grins. "Then you haven't _really_ got time to make crumble, have you, Dad?"

Lupin's glance is reproachful and Teddy returns to rummaging through the bowl, pulling out the occasional Tupperware full of his father's berries, picked in June when, every year without fail, he becomes a hunter-gatherer, scouring the hedges around their garden for potential crumble ingredients.

"Shouldn't you be out enjoying the sunshine?"

Teddy nods. "Yeah. I'm ready. I'm waiting for you."

Lupin looks up and frowns. "What?"

"You said you'd take me crabbing on the quay."

"It's Wednesday? Already?" He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "OK. Can you give me half an hour? I'll finish this piece, get changed, and we'll go, all right? Sorry about that, Ted. I lost track of…well, the week."

Lupin expects his son to be satisfied with this and return to whatever else he had planned, but Teddy doesn't move. He pulls out an orange and though Tonks deliberately buys 'easy-peel' for her daughter's still chubby fingers, bites into the rind. He winces and begins to pull at the tear he has made.

"You're going to make yourself sick," says Lupin. He momentarily forgets the book in his hands and freezes, staring at his young son who is peering at the fruit, pulling each white strand off every segment with meticulous precision.

"What are you doing?" he mutters, almost inaudible.

Teddy doesn't notice his change in tone. "I'm peeling an orange. What did you _think_ I was doing?"

Lupin's jaw drops. "Where did you learn that?"

Teddy shrugs. "This is how I _always_ peel an orange. Why? What's wrong?"

Lupin shakes his head. "Nothing. I…my…" He trails off, fascinated.

* * *

"What's the matter with you?" asks Tonks, standing in front of the mirror as her legs lose four inches, her hips widen, and her nose lengthens. "Can I keep the blonde tonight? Would you mind?"

Lupin hums vaguely.

"Look," says Tonks, climbing into bed and pulling the duvet up to her chin, "if you're _still_ worried about this job and you don't want to do it, just tell McGonagall you've changed your mind."

Lupin shakes his head. "Of course I want to do it. It's not that. Besides, it's too short notice." He rolls onto his side to look at her, resting his head on his upturned palm. "Do you think you can inherit a habit?"

Tonks frowns. "What do you mean?"

Lupin smiles momentarily. "How do you peel an orange?"

Tonks makes a face. "Remus, is this actually _going_ somewhere?"

"Do you peel off all of the pith?"

"No. I cut it into four and suck the juice out. Why?"

"Ted peels all of the white bits off his orange."

Tonks nods in place of not responding at all. "Oh."

"I used to think my father was an obsessive compulsive. I've never seen anyone else do it. Not like that anyway. Not with the precision of a surgeon. Except Ted."

Tonks smiles up at her husband. "Well I think it's lovely. I mean, he's got my clumsiness and that's not something you watch and learn."

Lupin smiles grimly. "I could have been his age sitting there." He rolls onto his back and falls into silence until Tonks waves her hand and plunges the room into darkness. "He would have loved him," Lupin whispers.

Tonks takes hold of his hand, entwining their fingers, and squeezes it.

"It's just not bloody fair." Lupin laughs pathetically under his breath. "I'm forty-six and it's _still_ just not bloody fair."

"I know." Tonks takes a deep breath. "Believe me. I know. And I know it's not the same. I was an adult. You were-"

Lupin shakes his head. "I was eighteen. I was old enough to react to it better than I did. Than I _do_. It's just that he was everything I wish I could be. I'm not used to looking at Ted – at _anyone_ – and seeing my father. Just when I think I've forgotten how much I miss him, when I'm a father myself, he's there – peeling an orange across the table."

Tonks smiles wistfully. "I wish I had that luxury."

Lupin pulls her closer, holding her against him. "Oh, Dora, he _is_ your father."

"You think so?"

Lupin raises an eyebrow, though he knows she can't see him in the dark. "Well, he's nothing like me. He's _you _and where do _you_ get it from? Certainly not your mother."

Tonks laughs. "God, no."

"Well, quite."


	8. School Friend

**Disclaimer: See first chapter.**

**A/N: As you may have gathered before now, I'm ignoring J.K.'s "he would never get a teaching job again" stuff because I like to delude myself. I don't know. I just got thinking how awkward this situation could actually be…**

**8. School Friend**

_August 2011_

Emma can't wait to go to Hogwarts. Most of the time, her brother encourages this anticipation with stories of his friends, Christmas parties in the common room, and the magic he is learning. This evening, as he stands in front of the mirror, knotting an acid green tie, he does not.

"Em, trust me. On nights like this, you'll wish you were a squib."

Emma has been blackmailed into keeping her white dress absolutely immaculate. If, by the time she sits down to dinner, it is in exactly the state it was in when her parents presented it to her, she will not spend the weekend with her father, cleaning the chicken shed.

"I don't wish I was a squib, but I wish I was old enough to go out."

"I _am_ old enough to go out. That doesn't work. I tried it."

"Oh stop it. Both of you." Tonks lengthens her blonde hair and pins it back. "This is important to your dad."

"It's important to _me_," Teddy protests. "He's Dad's mate, but he's the bane of my life."

Professor Nicholas Loveland is Ted Lupin's Transfiguration teacher. He sets tricky essays as homework, uses sarcasm as a hugely effective weapon, and regularly spends his Friday nights watching Ted perform menial tasks in detention.

Teddy, who has seen many photographs and been told plenty of stories about his father's friends, is somewhat disappointed by his choices as an adult. Had _any_ Marauder risen from the dead and dropped in for dinner, Teddy would have been beside himself with excitement. James fascinates him, he would like to _be_ Sirius, and Peter could make himself useful and do his Potions homework.

"Ted, he is _not_ the bane of your life. Don't be so melodramatic."

"Mum, you don't understand. I am victimised."

Tonks purses her lips. "_Victimised_? Dad lets him _victimise_ you?"

"All right, maybe not victimised, but he picks on me all the time. He's horrible to me. Every time he asks a question, he asks me. Every time I mess something up, I get hell when everyone else gets a tap on the wrist. It's not fair!"

"Well look, Ted, this is your home. He can't do any of that here."

"I bet he'll try, Mum. I bet he'll try. He'll be like, 'With which flour was this cake made? How close to the full moon should the wheat be harvested? Lupin? Any idea? No? Thought not.' And, as usual, I'll just have to pull an answer out of my arse."

Tonks tries not to laugh. "I won't let him. All right? Mummy will protect you."

Convinced he will be laughed at if he does not, Teddy plods down to the kitchen where his father is waiting for a moussaka to crisp up in the AGA. The room is lit by tealights and the dog has been banished to the garden. Evidently, this _does_ matter to his father.

"Dad, I know you like him, but he doesn't like me."

"How can he not like you? He's never really met you."

Teddy merely looks at him.

"Well, if you paid attention in his lessons and got your homework in on time, he might like you a little more."

"Yeah, but this is my house."

Lupin clears his throat pointedly.

"Dad, don't be so petty."

"Then stop acting like a child. You're always saying you wish you could meet my friends."

"Yes, but not _this_ one. Not _Loveland_."

"Funny," says Lupin, in a tone which indicates this is not funny at all. "He speaks very highly of you."

The knock at the door forces a cry out of Teddy.

"Answer the door, please. And for heaven's sake, be polite about it."

Something in the bottom of Teddy's stomach is performing somersaults. He thinks he might even be sick and wonders if that might be his ticket to bed with ice cream. It's summer, and light outside, so he knows Loveland can see him stalling through the glass pane in the door.

"Hello," he says, muttering darkly as he swings open the door in the manner of someone ripping off a plaster.

"Lupin!" cries Loveland, evidently far more pleased to see Ted than Ted will ever be to see him. "Goodness. Your tie isn't knotted halfway to your navel. I almost didn't recognise you."

Teddy smiles sarcastically. "I thought it might have been the hair."

Loveland laughs, ignoring Teddy's obvious contempt. "That too."

"I like it green, but Dad says I can't wear it like that tonight." _Because you're here_ hangs in the air between them.

"I don't dislike it. It certainly wakes me up first thing on a Monday morning."

They stand in the porch, Teddy wondering what to say to him, and Loveland smiling awkwardly, wondering if he's going to be asked in.

"You've met my son, of course," Lupin calls from the kitchen.

Loveland almost sighs with relief. He disguises it with a smile for Teddy as he steps past him. "I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again, I _love_ your house."

Teddy recoils in a mix of horror and genuine surprise. He has been here before? He has been here before and no-one has said anything?

_Well, of course_, says a little voice inside him. _Your friends come here. Why shouldn't his?_

The sudden rush of guilt in Teddy's stomach is enough to force a smile. He can pretend for one night. His father has got a 'school friend' – even if not in the conventional sense. He can smile just for tonight.

"Could you call your mum, Ted?"

Teddy nods at his father and even flashes a somewhat strained smile at his Transfiguration teacher.

"He's here," Ted calls up the stairs.

"Sounds ominous," replies Tonks, taking each step with practised precision. She ruffles his hair when she gets to the bottom. "Come on. I know it's a bit weird for you, but –"

"Yeah. I know."

"You're a good boy, Ted."

Teddy hums his appreciation. "Don't let it get out."

Tonks rolls her eyes, but she's smiling. "Right, are we all ready to pretend to be normal? Emma, please don't tell me that's a stain on your sleeve."

Emma bites her lip and allows her mother to charm it off.

"Okey dokey. Ted, can you smile? Can you let it reach your eyes now so you don't look like an excited lunatic? That's a good first attempt. Can we try it again?" She opens the door leading from the hall to the kitchen and ushers her children inside – one still not quite managing a believable smile, and the other inconspicuously checking her sleeves.

Tonks' laugh is half sigh. She can't bring Ted up on his appalling efforts and so she chooses to pretend no-one can tell his smile is just a little off.

"You've met my wife."

She holds her hand out to shake Loveland's. "Nice to see you again."

"Yes. And you."

"Of course, you know Ted. And this is Emma. Emma, this is Professor Loveland and he'll be teaching you next year."

Loveland stoops to shake Emma's hand. "Are you coming in September?"

Emma looks to her mother who smiles encouragingly. "No, sir. Next September."

"Well, I'll look out for you."

Teddy casts his sister a knowing glance. The room falls into a somewhat awkward silence.

"Whiskey?"

Loveland's shoulders fall in relief. "That would be wonderful. Thank you."

* * *

"Lupin, I _don't_ hate you. I don't know where you've got this idea from."

Ted raises an eyebrow. "It's always me. Tom's homework is late every now and again too. Tom doesn't get pulled up in class about it."

Dinner has been cleared away, the dog has been let in, and several butterbeers later, Ted is confronting his professor, much to his father's chagrin. Tonks begins to count the empty bottles lined up on the counter. He's not had a large amount, but it's evidently enough.

"Ted, I really think it might be time to call it a night."

"I _have_ to bring you up on it," Loveland protests. "Look, your father and I are, as the saying goes, thick as thieves. If were to cut you any slack, Ted, your classmates _wouldn't_. As it is, they are all hugely sympathetic to your plight _and_ they're terrified of me. It's win-win."

Teddy frowns.

"I'm sure your father treats you in much the same way. Or do you pay attention and get your homework in on time for him? In which case, perhaps I ought to be taking offence at _your_ behaviour toward _me_."

Teddy has to concede that Loveland has a point. A small part of him even wants to applaud. Instead, he falls silent, mulling it over while conversation is deftly steered back to safer topics.

* * *

"Oh God, I'm so embarrassed."

The next morning is not a pleasant one for Teddy. He takes a seat at the table and rests his head in his folded arms. Lupin, halfway through the crossword and idly playing with the dog's ears, smiles knowingly.

"I'm not surprised. You were a boy possessed. Poor Professor Loveland was quite alarmed."

Teddy groans. "My life is not worth living when I go back to school."

"Do you want some tea?"

Teddy, not lifting his head from his arms, nods. His father gestures toward the teapot in the centre of the table.

"I'm not pouring it _for_ you. Listen, Ted, it's not all that bad. He was laughing about it when he left. I think he thinks you're a bit paranoid, but he has a point. I think he's doing a very sensible thing for you." Lupin sighs. "When I was sixteen, I thought I wasn't going to pass Potions. In fact, Professor Slughorn told me I'd be lucky to manage a T. I passed and I was quite proud of it. And the following Christmas, Peter was invited to a party thrown by Professor Slughorn and he asked me if I wanted to go with him. I made the mistake of agreeing, and seven whiskies later, I was waving a glass in my former teacher's face and, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I'm told it was something like, 'I exceeded _your_ expectations, didn't I?' I thought I would have to hibernate, and James and Sirius, who weren't even there, struck comedy gold."

Teddy sips at his tea. "So what did you do?"

"Well, firstly, I kept out of his way. I'd dropped Potions after that E. I thought it best to end on a high note. Obviously, you can't do that, _but_ there's a very important difference between you and me. _Your_ professor actually likes you. He thinks you're funny. He thinks you're perfectly charming. He also thinks that if you knuckle down, you're capable of great things. I don't think there's any need to apologise, but it might be a nice gesture all the same."

"Will he come again?"

Lupin nods. "But if you want to make yourself scarce in future, I won't object if that's what you want to do."

Teddy shrugs, which his father takes to mean that he does not wish to make himself scarce, but is far too proud to say anything.

"And since I subjected you to an evening of your teacher, I think it's only fair you subject me to a weekend of Calamity Collins."

Teddy immediately perks up. "Really?"

"Preferably next weekend rather than this one, but by all means, he can come down for a few days. We'll work out a trading system for our 'school' friends, all right?"

Teddy gets to his feet and, standing behind his father's chair, wraps his arms around Lupin's shoulders. "Dad, you're the best. And six down; the bassist's stage name is The Kraken."

Lupin nods. "Ah. Good. That gives me seven across. I wasn't sure if it was a 'C' or a 'K'."

"And please don't call Tom 'Calamity'."

Lupin laughs. "Ted, if I hadn't seen it, I would never have believed anyone could get _fourteen_ injuries from a levitation charm."


	9. Midlife Crisis

**Disclaimer: See first chapter.**

**A/N: This was suggested to me a little while ago when I first started writing these little snapshots ("**_**It's just something about the idea of Tonks going through hers with Lupin teasing in the background that makes me chuckle**_**").**

**This may or may not have something to do with a recent birthday that turned me into a serious adult.**

**9. Midlife Crisis**

**August 2013**

"I'm forty tomorrow."

Lupin lowers the Weekend Supplement and removes his reading glasses, too conscious of revealing a high forehead to push them up. "What would you like to do for it?"

Tonks shakes her head. "_Forty_, Remus."

Lupin nods. "We don't have to fill the house with people if you'd rather not, but it's a pretty big milestone. Perhaps we could ask everyone to just drop in for cake. How does that sound?"

She sighs. "I wouldn't mind ignoring it actually, if that's all right with you."

"Well, now that you ask, no. No, that is not all right with me. I told you several times that I didn't want a fuss for mine and there was a, frankly, ridiculous amount of pomp involved."

Tonks sniggers despite herself. "I thought the smoking jackets were a nice touch."

"But you won't let me organise yours?"

Tonks merely looks at him, the slight raise of her eyebrows conveying far more than speech.

"What? Why not?"

"Why do you _think_?"

"I'm good at themed parties."

"Yes, I know. That's my point. You'll think of something you find hilarious."

Lupin is almost affronted. "I'm _jolly_ good at hilarious."

"_Too_ good."

He grins, his eyes shining copper, and Tonks thinks she can hear the cogs whirring round her husband's head.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, _what_?"

"You're having a midlife crisis, aren't you?"

Tonks hits him with the newspaper. "I'm fine. I just don't want fifty-three people smoking pipes and drinking brandy in the living room at _my_ fortieth."

* * *

"Your mum's feeling a bit low. The hill is beckoning her over it."

Teddy is halfway through demolishing a mountain of toast, much to his sister's disgust.

"Ted, maybe you should rest to breathe for a bit?"

"Excuse me? I'm a growing lad."

"Yeah, _wider_."

Teddy shrugs. "You're one to talk. You might want to lay off the birthday cake or you'll be _waddling_ around Hogwarts next month."

"Well at least I'll still have the hips of a fifteen year old boy."

"That's _enough_, both of you. What are we going to do about your mother?"

Emma frowns, both her brow and nose wrinkling. "Why do we have to do _anything_? It's just a birthday, isn't it?"

"She won't admit it, but she's feeling terrible."

Teddy's smile is too wide, too reminiscent of Sirius, and the familiar flitter of terrified anticipation courses through Lupin.

"What?"

"I was wondering what you wanted when _you_ were having a midlife crisis?"

"I was about sixteen, Ted; I don't count."

"So a racing broom and a girlfriend then?"

Lupin's glance is reproachful. Teddy meets his eyes and holds his gaze. Tonks' fear rather suddenly makes a great deal of sense to him. They're _all_ getting older much too quickly.

"Yes, Ted. And I got neither."

Teddy's responding smile is almost smug.

"And your having both does not give you the right to look at me like that."

Teddy laughs, but he doesn't apologise.

"Right. Tomorrow night, we're having a small party."

"What's the theme?" asks Emma.

"I haven't thought of one yet. Oh, and what do we think of lemon and raspberry cake?"

"I think it's not chocolate cake," replies Teddy, "and that's unacceptable."

"Your mum doesn't like chocolate cake."

"No," says Teddy, grinning, "but _I_ do."

* * *

"I just want to talk about it."

"Well I don't," replies Tonks, focusing on the crossword her husband had half-completed in bed with tea and toast. "Oh come on, Remus, how can you not know this one?"

Lupin, heating the last of the raspberries and adding sugar to make jam for tomorrow's birthday cake, is too immersed in the contents of his saucepan to question which squares she has filled.

Their children are out; Lupin suspects their activities may involve the dog who has been absent all afternoon. The kitchen is eerily quiet. He works long hours, between teaching, patrols, and detentions, coming home for full moons, birthdays, and every fourth weekend, negotiated because he took the job when his daughter was only four years old. Now, he and the children are at school, and he cannot imagine how lonely mealtimes must be for her in an empty house.

"I can't cure you of your aversion to forty."

Tonks looks up from the paper. Her husband is still concentrating on making jam. "I don't have an aversion to forty."

Lupin ignores her denial. "But I think I know what the problem is."

"What's the problem then?"

"You're feeling old."

Tonks frowns. "Do _you_ think I'm old?"

For the first time, Lupin looks up and meets her eyes. "Do _I_ think _you_ are old?"

"I found a grey hair last week."

Lupin smiles grimly. "I found my first at seventeen. I had a crisis about it and Peter put peroxide on my hair while I was asleep. You will get absolutely no sympathy from me on the subject of grey hair. You will also not get peroxide. Every cloud…"

Tonks can't help the smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. "You're avoiding my question, you know."

"Because you _know_ I don't think you're old."

"At forty-two, you had a daughter. At forty-two, the only thing I'll have is hot flushes."

"You've been giving me hot flushes for the last eighteen years so really, it's only fair."

Tonks runs a hand through her shoulder-length brown hair. "I worry about it. That's all. If I should want to, I can look twenty-two forever, but I don't want to and I'm worried people are going to think I'm a bit bonkers for that. Worse, what if they think I'm trying and then they say, 'Isn't it a shame about poor old Tonks?' and everyone else nods? And I think mostly, I'm so angry that I'm not forty, am I? I'm thinking like I'm fourteen, but I'm a bit worried I'm not going to be able to give you hot flushes anymore and if I ensure that I can, am I objectifying myself? And if I am, how can I expect Emma to have any amount of respect for me? And in five hours, I am officially going to cease to be the thirty-something mother who got away with pretty much anything and be the forty-something mother who's desperately trying to cling onto who she used to be. Jesus, Remus, how did you _do_ it?"

Lupin shrugs. "I bought four more cardigans."

Tonks glares at him.

"I don't know what to say. I don't mind what you look like. If you want liver spots, just go ahead. As long as you think you look fine, who cares what anyone else thinks? Certainly not _you_. You never have."

Tonks sits back in her chair. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you can be relied upon to say the wrong thing at the right time, that you dress inappropriately for _every_ occasion, and that, as a result, to me at any rate, you are perfect. You've a blatant disregard for order and anything considered to be the norm. And I love you for it. You _don't_ and, for the life of me, I cannot fathom it."

"But –"

"Emma adores you and I would like to think that she's been raised better than to belittle you because you're fond of neon hair." He turns back to his jam and addresses the bottom of the saucepan. "And for what it's worth, you will give me hot flushes until the day I die."

* * *

She's woken up with cake and moderately priced champagne for breakfast. A collection of owls are perched on her windowsill, each carrying a card and a small gift. A long, thin parcel is propped against the wardrobe doors and it just has to be a broom; _has_ to be.

"Happy birthday."

As Tonks rubs the sleep out of her eyes, she reluctantly prises them from the neatly wrapped broomstick and toward her family. The three of them are dressed in smoking jackets. Emma is twirling a monocle. Her son is holding an unlit cigar with an alarming amount of poise.

"You said you didn't want pomp and ceremony," says Lupin, "much as I said of my fortieth and seeing as most of my friends arrived looking as though they'd recently returned from a fox hunt, I thought –"

"– that you'd give your son a cigar?"

"Yeah, but unlit!" Teddy protests. "I'm in recovery."

Lupin rolls his eyes. "You are _not_ 'in recovery'. Would you _stop_ telling people that?"

"I say, old boy, there's no need for that tone. There's a birthday going on here."

* * *

Bunting hangs low from the tree branches in the garden. The sea breeze is warm and the air tastes salty. They're soaking up the last of the summer sun, spooning leftover lemon buttercream into their mouths and drinking the last of the now flat champagne. Ted and Emma are playing a particularly violent game of chess, both refusing to remove their quilted jackets despite the heat. Andromeda, having cast off her jacket, naps in the swing-chair under the Oak. The chickens are scouring the lawn for worms while the dog, too old and too hot to terrorise them, sleeps under the table.

"That broom had better not have cost more than a month's expenses."

Lupin grins mischievously. "No comment."

"Tell me it didn't come from a man in the pub. That's all I want to know."

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

Emma's queen takes Teddy's last bishop and they squabble good-naturedly.

"If you've got a cigar, I don't see why I can't have a pipe."

"I think I know what happened to a couple of them. Come on. I'm not leaving you alone with the board. I dread to think what would happen to my knight."

The children disappear into the gloom of the passage and Tonks spoons the last of the buttercream and leftover raspberry jam from the bowl.

"When I was at school and I imagined what my life would be like at forty, I didn't even _think_ about them."

Lupin shakes his head. "No, nor did I."

"Or a husband who actually _makes_ his own jam." She smiles sadly. "I thought I was going to be very lonely actually, and now I'm surrounded by noisy chickens, I'm _fairly_ sure my son is off somewhere lighting that cigar, and no doubt I am about to be lectured on the many ways in which jam making might be considered a life skill."

Lupin only smiles wryly.

"Can I tell you something, honestly?" asks Tonks, watching the chickens peck around her feet. "I have never been happier than I am right now."


	10. Macbeth

**Disclaimer: See Prologue**

**A/N: Thank you, everyone. I had such an amazing response to the last chapter and I will get round to you individually.**

**This happened once when I thought this was a great idea. My godfather (a genuinely **_**brilliant**_** man with more money than morals) and I decided to do "something nice" for my dad.**

**10: Pet**

_2006_

"Nonna?"

Ted's paternal grandmother is his favourite. She's warm and far more easy-going than his mum's mother. Andromeda takes none of his nonsense; Emma revels in it. Her hugs are the best in the world and she tells jokes about nuns that Teddy doesn't really understand, but he knows they're funny because his mum shrieks with laughter. She looks after him and his sister when his parents' holidays conflict with his godfather's.

"Yes?"

"Who's that?" He nods toward a photograph framed on the kitchen wall.

Mrs. Lupin steps back from the cooker to peer at her collection of pictures. Some move, some don't, but she suspects Ted's not referring to one of her Muggle relations.

"That's your dad, silly."

"I know the kid is, but who's the dog?"

Emma laughs. "Oh, I see. The people who bred him called him Aeneas and John said it was bad luck to change his name. Your granddad bought him about six weeks before I had your father. I was absolutely furious. Your dad's only six there and he and that dog were inseparable. You know, I was looking up Aeneas when I found Remus. Romulus and Remus were, goodness, something like his grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren."

Teddy is uninterested in this, but he nods along for her sake. "So what breed was he?"

"A bloodhound. They usually only live a few years, but Aeneas hung on for fifteen. Your granddad was amazed. Of course, your father was very upset when he died. We'd had that dog longer than we'd had our son."

They've never had a pet and it's hard to imagine his dad with one.

"I wish _I_ had a dog."

"I'm surprised you don't. Your father loved animals, and animals, by and large, loved your father. Some of them would drink his blood as soon as look at him, but the safer sort of things had free run of the house. Cats, in particular, were crazy about him, but he's always been a dog person really." She jumps and pulls blackened toast out of the grill. "Shit."

Teddy laughs incredulously. Nobody's ever sworn in front of him before. He thinks his father has come very close once or twice, but he's always managed to reign himself in. 'Shit' is, as far as Teddy knows, the worst word anyone can possibly say.

"Don't tell your dad and you can have two spoons of crumble after dinner."

Teddy grins. "Deal."

* * *

They're sitting on the sofa the following Saturday evening, the back door thrown open, the early March sun pouring in.

"Why don't we have a pet, Dad?"

Lupin has to think about this, so he steals a spoonful of his son's banana ice cream and makes a small appreciative noise in the back of his throat. "Have you got more of this?"

Teddy nods. "If I tell you where it is, can I have a dog?"

"It's ice cream, Ted. I _know_ where it is." He grins and gestures for his son to follow him into the kitchen. "So what sort of dog are we talking about? It can't be a big one; your sister's only small."

Teddy's face lights up. "Really? We can get one?"

Lupin nods. "I don't see why not. We'll have to run it by your mother, of course."

Teddy nods. "I will. Can I do it, Dad? Please?"

"I don't know," says Lupin, standing back to appraise the mound of ice cream in the bowl. He adds a second serving and decides that's probably enough. "I think I'd better talk to her myself first, Ted."

* * *

"Mum, can I get a dog? Dad said I could."

Tonks, inserting an earring, is forced to make encouraging sounds for fear that this lead to an argument which might make her late.

"And when did he say this?"

"Two minutes ago." Teddy pushes his parents' bedroom door open and makes himself comfortable on their recently made bed. "I want us to get him one for his birthday."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow, O.K.?"

"O.K. then."

But he knows they won't.

* * *

James and Emma are only two months apart and so they are forced to play together. Occasionally, Emma's godmother brings her little girl, but she's a year younger and James and Emma are united in their distaste.

At large gatherings, Teddy and Victoire Weasley, both a little older than the other children, skulk off and sit in the garden. On this occasion, Ted's godparents and their children are visiting and Ted has an ulterior motive.

"What are you getting my dad for his birthday?"

Harry stammers, wondering if _all_ children are as blunt as Ted Lupin, and if his children will grow up to behave like miniature adults too. "Er…well, I…er…I hadn't thought about it really, Ted."

"Good." Teddy grins. "You can get him one with me then."

"A joint present?"

"A joint present, yes."

"Why would you want to get your dad a joint present?"

"Because I can't get it on my own. And besides, I need someone else to be in trouble with me because I can't ask Mum for help."

Harry frowns. They're sitting outside in the shade of the Oak tree, on a rickety wooden bench which Harry suspects has been there longer than Lupin himself. Through the double doors, he can just make out Lupin opening a large book and putting something small in his mouth when he thinks no-one is watching. The man is a Marauder, after all, and Harry thinks he can take anything Teddy can throw at him.

"What _is_ this present then?"

"A bloodhound puppy."

Harry's jaw drops.

"And Nonna says there's a man selling them in Salcombe which is about ten minutes away on the bus so it can't be far."

"When have _you_ been on the bus?"

"Lots of times."

Harry knows better than to argue.

* * *

The earliest he can sneak off is five o'clock in the morning. It's his dad's birthday and he doesn't want to miss too much of it. Nor does he want to be so late getting home that his mother goes looking for him.

Harry is barely awake. Ted knows his father is at home for the Easter holidays and his mother isn't going into work either. He's not wanted to grasp the concept of his father's birthday not being a national holiday because it might make him feel guilty about getting his own way.

"And you're sure your mum's all right with this?"

"Yep."

"Did she say you could get one?"

Teddy mumbles a response.

Those who remain of the litter, sleep in a ramshackle pen. Ted immediately knows which one he wants. It's his father's birthday present, but it will be _his_ dog. It's the smallest and he pities it, but it's also quiet and sleeps alone in the corner. He thinks this dog will be less likely to irritate his mother. Besides, it's the only one with the black and tan saddle pattern he recognises on the dog in the sepia photograph.

He's asked his Nonna for Muggle money, but his savings don't amount to much. Harry, obliging, pays the rest and, unsure whether it is safe to Apparate while clutching his godson _and_ a puppy, follows Ted to the bus stop.

* * *

"Mum?" Teddy opens the door far enough to get his head through it. His father is a light sleeper and he's terrified of the creaking floorboards on the other side of the door. "Mum?" he whispers a second time, harsher now.

Tonks groans sleepily, rolling onto her back and opening only one eye to look at him. "What?"

"Shh." Teddy presses a finger to his lips and gestures for her to follow him.

He's turned away from the door before she can protest. Forced into her dressing gown and slippers at seven o'clock on her day off, Tonks is not in the best of moods. The situation is not improved by the sound of _something_ moving around in the kitchen.

"What is that?"

Teddy only grins.

"Ted?"

"It's a bloodhound."

Tonks gawps at him. "How in God's name did you get a bloodhound?"

"The same usual, boring way most people get dogs. I went to a breeder and bought one."

Tonks raises her eyebrows. "If I were you, I wouldn't take that tone with me. Where did you get the money to pay for him?"

"He's Dad's birthday present."

"Doesn't answer my question, Ted."

"He's from me and Harry."

"Do you have any idea how much trouble you are _both_ in?"

Teddy beams at her. He smiles like his father, his lips pressed firmly together to conceal the long canines that have been passed down from his grandmother. "Come and see him."

Tonks rolls her eyes. "What's his name?"

"He's Dad's present. I think maybe we should let him decide."

"Oh, that's it. _I'm_ not calling him in then."

The puppy looks pleased to see Ted and bounds toward him as he opens the kitchen door.

"He's going to get a lot bigger. What's going to happen then?"

Teddy shrugs. "Dad kept one here before."

Tonks sighs, aware that she is far too lenient with both of her children. Her mother had been extremely strict; her father somewhat irresponsible, utterly reckless, and far more fun to be around. She doesn't want her children to resent her. She suspects her son already favours his father and she knows she'd be compensating for it if she were to agree.

"Can we keep him, Mum? Go on."

"Well, what else would you do with him? Take him back and exchange him for a gift voucher?"

Teddy grins, still kneeling on the floor, playing with the dog's ludicrously long ears. "You're the best!"

"Your father is either going to love it or he's going to wear your head as a hat across the Home Counties."

Teddy shrugs. "Both?"

"Probably. Just _wait_ until I see Harry."

Teddy winces. "Yeah, look. I told him you said I could get it."

"Why would you do a thing like that?"

Teddy looks at her like she's a moron. "So he'd help me."

"Watch your lip."

Teddy sticks his bottom lip out, his eyes shooting downwards to try to catch a glimpse of it.

"O.K., smart-arse."

Teddy grins at her. "When can we show him off?"

Tonks rolls her eyes. "Give your dad an hour. He needs to get plenty of sleep after last week."

* * *

"Happy birthday."

Lupin groans, burying his face into his pillow. "I thought we agreed to stop celebrating them after forty."

Tonks wriggles under the duvet, positioning herself to kiss his cheek. "You agreed that on your own then, spoilsport." She gently knocks her nose against his cheek, eliciting another moan in protest. "Besides, after all the effort Teds went into to get your present, you might as well enjoy it."

Now he's awake. Ted Lupin is truly the son of a Marauder. James and Sirius would be extremely proud to be associated with him so, tentatively, Lupin inquires as to when Teddy managed to get him a present.

Tonks shrugs. "I can't say."

He sighs. "Yes, you can. I dread to think what he's-"

From the kitchen come the sounds of scratching against wood. The stairs creak as his son hurtles down them. He can hear shushing noises and the silence becomes deafening.

"Alright, now I'm terribly afraid." He listens for the sounds of his son on the stairs. "Ted?"

"Can I come in?"

"Of course you can."

He pushes the door open and runs to his father, arms outstretched and ready to fling around his shoulders. "Happy Birthday, Dad."

Lupin can still wrap his arms around the boy with ease, despite Ted seemingly growing every time he so much as casts a glance in his direction. As his son lands on the bed, Lupin, clutching him, falls back onto his pillows. Ted's hair, today the colour of peanut butter and smelling of his mother's apple shampoo, hangs in his father's eyes, but Lupin does not release him.

"What's the commotion downstairs?"

"It's not a commotion."

"Are you going to go and wake Emma up?"

"Yeah." Teddy loves doing this more than anything else of a Sunday morning. Usually, he's thought long and hard about it. Sometimes, he morphs into their maternal grandmother and peers at her until she wakes up screaming. Sometimes, he shakes her, covered in tomato sauce and pretending to be half-dead until she wakes up screaming. Sometimes, he strategically places tiny spiders on her cheeks until she wakes up screaming. He doesn't see this as unfair. He is her big brother and that is his job.

Today, there is no time. He is beside himself with excitement.

"Emmy, wake up. Em! Come on. Em, we've got a puppy."

Emma is out of bed and into her dressing gown and slippers in record time. She wasn't quite as quick, Teddy notices, the time she thought he was covered in blood.

"Really? A real puppy?"

Teddy nods frantically. "Go and say hello to Dad. We'll be up in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

When Ted opens the bedroom door, the three of them are sat in bed, Emma in the middle, looking like the kneazle who got the cream.

"Please don't be angry," says Ted, knowing this is not the best opening line.

Lupin's mouth forms a thin line. He nods once. There's a funny glint in his eyes and Ted sincerely hopes Emma hasn't opened her big mouth.

But the moment the dog traipses into the room, its drooping cheeks making it look rather forlorn, Ted knows nobody has spoiled the surprise. He's never seen his father genuinely taken aback before. He's never watched anybody's face fall before. There's a moment of agonising silence from his father; the only sound that of the dog's claws clacking against the wooden floor like tap-shoes.

"How on earth?"

He looks up and his father is beaming like a lunatic; he can exhale again. Ted grins back.

"He's from Harry too."

"The two of you are _never_ leaving this house alone ever again."

Teddy chooses to ignore this because it conflicts with his godfather's Sunday morning Quidditch games. "But you like him?"

Lupin nods. "And I've wanted to get one for a long time. It's just that I imagined _I _would buy one for _your_ birthday."

"Dad, by the time you'd made any sort of decision, I'd have moved out." Ted tucks the puppy under his arm and scrambles onto the bed to sit with everyone else. "What are you going to call him?"

"Well, I used to name my cats after composers. There was a theme."

Tonks grins. "Name him after a Weird Sister. He could be Wagtail, you know, after Myron."

Teddy shakes his head violently. "I am _not_ shouting for him if you call him Myron Wagtail, Mum. People talk."

Lupin nods solemnly. "Quite. The only way this dog is being named after a Weird Sister is if he's named for _Macbeth_." His eyes light up in a manner which Teddy finds deeply unnerving.

"Oh, Dad, _no_. No. Please don't call my dog Macbeth."

Lupin grins. "Sorry, _whose_ dog? Hello, Mac."


	11. First

**Disclaimer: See Prologue**

**A/N: This is a little different to the others. There were several drafts written for "First", but this one's probably the most interesting. The next one will be a little more like the others though, promise.**

**11. First**

_1998_

It's their first date since their son was born, since the war ended, since their lives have changed completely. Lupin's not been on what he thinks might constitute an actual _date_ in years, so he sits in the kitchen, where he is going to take his wife, and wishing she had not left this to him.

But Tonks has bigger problems. She stands alone before the mirror, analysing her appearance. Her baby-weight has been morphed away. She doesn't entirely hate it; he won't admit it, but she knows the sudden swell of her breasts, the curve of her tiny waist leading to hips almost as wide as her shoulders, is driving her husband quietly mad.

This, she knows, is partly due to his typical male tendencies, and partly due to the fact that she was told it would be best to avoid "_relations_" until six weeks had passed. Their son is now eight weeks old and Lupin hasn't pushed the issue, but she thinks tonight might be the first time in almost two months that they make love.

And she is terrified.

There are some things she cannot hide when she morphs; her heart-shaped face, her widow's peak, a blush. He's only a baby, but she's noticed Ted's face is always heart-shaped too. She's resigned herself to the fact that there's no way around it.

Sometimes, she is glad that her husband is terribly romantic about it and insists that she be in her natural form when they are intimate. She rolls her eyes every time he asks her to be the short, mousy-haired little nobody she used to hate, but he's enabled her to make peace with her natural appearance.

And this would be fine – more than fine – except since the war, since Ted, she's not as comfortable as she once was. She knows he has glimpsed the lattice pattern of scars across her chest and he knows that she morphs them away. She wonders whether it is churlish to hide them when he cannot, whether it is hypocritical to idly trace his with short fingernails so as not to open them, in those few minutes when moving is not high on either of their agendas. He's not seen the angry red stretch marks their son has left her with, but there's little point hiding them; he's not stupid.

She hides the scars given to her by her fundamentalist psychopath of an aunt because her dress has a Bardot neckline, but she leaves the others. They're from Ted and she's a bit proud of them. They're not painful to look at; they don't bring back memories that morph into nightmares and wake her in the middle of the night, leaving her drenched in cold sweat.

She physically shakes off the thought, tossing this evening's choice of elbow-length hair as she does so. She pushes the dress taught against her frame. It's on loan from her mother-in-law. Strictly, it should be a little too snug. She's seen photographs of a young Mrs. Lupin – photographs of her bending over, her back forming a perfect arch, her tiny feet en pointe in ballet slippers. If she wasn't a metamorphagus, the phrase, "I've got a dress you'd look lovely in" would terrify Tonks.

But she _is_ a metamorphmagus and she _does_ look lovely in it. The tangerine cotton looks breath-taking coupled with her mother-in-law's olive skin and wild black curls. Tonks has opted to team orange with auburn, her skin almost deathly pale; she doesn't want to emulate somebody else's appearance, least of all that of her date's mother.

"So where are we going?" she asks, closing the kitchen door behind her. "What do you think? Am I overdressed?"

Lupin only shakes his head.

"What? I know it's not really _me_, but I rather like it actually and I know it's pretty much a carbon copy of your mother's figure, which is a bit odd, but –"

"Well now that you've told me that, what I was _going_ to say will sound perverse, but you look lovely."

"So where are we going?"

"I know how fond you are of cocktails, so –"

Tonks' eyes light up. "Are we going for cocktails? That's super. I was ridiculously worried about this dress."

"Do you remember The Oyster Catcher?"

Tonks vaguely recalls walking by it one evening; a small shack of a building on the coast, full of noisy punters and interesting records, the bass of one she could feel across the water.

"Oh wow. Are we going there?"

"It's a tourist-trap, but it's still only June; we might be in luck."

* * *

She's over-estimated Lupin's alcohol tolerance. It's half past nine and:

"You're hammered."

"No I'm not. I'm festive."

Tonks rolls her eyes good-naturedly. "That works really well at Christmas, I'll give you that."

The Oyster Catcher is far more up-market than she'd expected. The furniture is made of driftwood and the walls haven't been plastered, but the women are wearing cocktail dresses and the chink of her ring against her glass makes such a beautiful sound that it has to be crystal and she almost wants to hear it again.

"I used to work here."

Tonks wrinkles her nose in a mixture of amusement and wonder. "Really?"

Lupin nods. "I think my father confunded someone. I was a barman, summer staff, at sixteen. No idea how I got it. I looked about twelve." He reaches for the nearest glass and knocks back the contents, wincing. "I think that was yours."

Tonks nods.

"It was vile."

"I'm sure I'd say that about yours." She lifts his glass to the light. The drink itself is clear, but there are so many leaves floating in it that it looks like a lake at the end of summer. "What _is_ this?"

"An 'English Mojito'."

"And what's that when it's at home?"

"Gin and lemonade."

"And the leaves?"

"Mint."

Tonks turns her face away from it, disgusted.

"Well, _I _like it."

"It looks like pond water."

Lupin laughs. "It does rather."

"Come on, drink up. I want to get a move on."

Lupin frowns, but he does as he's told. "And what, may I ask, is your hurry?"

Tonks gets to her feet, pulling him up and clutching his hands. "I want you, not firing on all cylinders, but at least sixty per cent sober tonight."

Lupin winces. "That's a big ask. What have you got planned?"

She looks at him like he is a small, pathetic child; the same half-exasperated, half-pitying look that Peter would give him at least twice a week in Potions.

"Oh. _Oh_. Yes, right, of course."

He wants to protest, to remind her that she paid for more rounds than he did, but he knows it would either result in further amounts of gin or bankruptcy, so he follows her out onto the cliffs.

It may be June, but the coastal winds whip both Tonks' mane of red hair and the skirt of her dress into her face. She shrieks with laughter and the cold, clamping the skirt to her thighs.

"Jesus!"

"You'd better have this." He hands her his favourite patched brown leather jacket. Without it, he is so cold that he thinks he might freeze if they walk home.

Ordinarily, his clothes suit her. Ordinarily, Tonks is a little taller and a little less pixie-like. Tonight, it swamps her, making her look like a lost child; Lolita, he supposes, in that dress. The sleeves are too long. He rolls them up to her wrists and takes hold of her hand.

"Nice legs, by the way."

"Thanks. They're your mother's."

"Well isn't that nice."

Tonks cackles with laughter and, despite himself, Lupin finds it contagious. Pulling her close to him, close enough to count the freckles on her nose, he pushes a loose strand of auburn hair behind her ear and, though there is no-one around to hear him, whispers, "If I _am_ sixty per cent sober tonight, can you _not_ have the hip-span of a fourteen-year-old boy please?"

"They're your mother's hips too. They had to be to even get in the damn thing. Seriously, Remus, did she never eat?"

"Don't change the subject. What are you worried about?"

They're walking along the cliffpath, holding hands and shivering, and Tonks doesn't think this is the place to discuss it. She's not sure she wants to discuss it at all.

"What makes you think I'm worried?"

Lupin raises his eyebrows. "You don't want to tell me?"

"I'm not worried about anything." Tonks drops his hand, stops, and stares at him.

"All right, well, I _am_. I'm worried that you wait for me to fall asleep before you'll come to bed. I'm worried that when you wake up in the morning, you leap out of it like I've swapped the mattress for live lobsters." Tonks laughs, but Lupin doesn't. "Most of all, I'm worried that you won't even tell me why."

"Remus, it's _me_, all right? It's me. I'm…I don't feel like me anymore. I don't _look_ like me anymore and, you know, six weeks are up."

Lupin laughs with relief, but he soon silences himself, realising she will think he's insincere. "You're a metamorphagus, aren't you?"

Tonks is sceptical. "You ask me not to do that."

Lupin sighs. "That's not a personal preference. What was it Henry Higgins said? 'I've grown accustomed to her face'. I…" He trails off, turning and ambling back the way they came. Tonks follows, frowning deeply and wondering what such a confession can possibly have prompted. She doesn't want a fight, not tonight, not when they're supposed to be celebrating and enjoying one another's company.

He climbs ever higher. Somewhere below her, Tonks can hear the jukebox in the corner of The Oyster Catcher. It's getting dark and she can't see just how high they are until she turns the corner and the cliff-path opens onto plains of long grass and steep drops onto the rocks below. She feels a little sick.

He's sitting on the edge, his legs dangling into nothingness, swinging.

"Remus, please don't sit there. It's terrifying me."

He shuffles backwards, swinging his legs back onto solid ground and taps the space beside him. Reluctantly, Tonks joins him.

"What?"

Lupin smiles sadly. "If you weren't comfortable with it, you ought to have said."

"I _was_. I _am_."

"I wanted you to know that I wasn't going to take advantage of what you can do. I wanted you to know that I was, that I _am_, hopelessly in love with you; not the woman I can dream up. And yes, it's selfish of me, but when I wake up in the morning, I want to wake up next to my wife. That's all. If you want to have pink hair, knock yourself out. If you don't want the scars, I _understand_. I don't want mine and if I had the opportunity to hide them, I would snatch it."

Tonks reaches for his hand in the darkness. As his fingers wrap around hers, she squeezes her thanks. Only five minutes ago, the silence would be all-consuming, deafening, eating away at her, but now it's companionable. Elevated fifty feet above the town on the coast, almost looking down at clouds, it's not at all as awkward as she'd thought this conversation might be. The cocktails might have something to do with it.

"I love you, you know."

Tonks laughs. "I've had my suspicions for a while. You're not very subtle, Remus."

"No?"

"The wedding ring, the baby in the next room…" She winks at him, her smile spreading into a wide grin. "Are you sixty per cent sober yet? Only I'm bloody freezing and this dress doesn't allow for an insulating layer of blubber. I literally cannot fathom how your mother is able to leave the house in winter."

Lupin shakes his head. "You should see the shoes. I think it's sheer force of will that keeps her upright in a breeze."

Tonks throws her head back. Her laughter is so loud that it echoes, even out on the cliffs. She tumbles onto her back, throwing her arms out behind her, her hair splayed across the grass. She can't understand how she feels so lightheaded. "Do you ever think you could just jump?" Lupin does not respond and she sits up suddenly, a little too quickly. He's staring at her, peering really, his jaw dropping.

"_What_?" It's little more than a whisper.

"Not in a suicidal way or anything, just, you know, a jump."

"I used to do it all the time," he admits. "Whenever I was lonely, whenever I was spitting with anger, I'd take a running leap."

Tonks is fascinated, hanging on his every word. "What does it feel like?"

"Freedom," he says simply.

"So it _is_ safe then?"

He shrugs. "I have absolutely no idea. It could be sheer luck that I'm not still impaled on a rock down there."

"Right." Tonks gets to her feet with a surprising amount of grace. She hands Lupin his jacket and throws off his mother's dress. He averts his eyes and Tonks, with a sigh, lengthens her legs and widens her waist.

"It's all right. You don't have to feel like Oedipus anymore."

Her hands are splayed across her stomach, trying to shield what seem to her paranoid mind to be welts, but are mere silvery red rivers, not entirely unlike those her husband has given himself. He's looking at her like he might look at a vision of God. Clutching his coat in one hand, he almost stumbles to his feet and slowly steps toward her.

His kiss is electric, a current racing through her veins. She's running out of breath, but she won't release him. It's the first time they've done this for weeks, the first time she has let him.

He pulls away, smiling to himself. His lips are swollen. He's almost hopeful when he asks, "Do you want to go home?"

Tonks nods. "I think I'm ready to actually move on with my life. I know I'm not the same person, but I think I like who I've become. I think I can do this." She smiles sadly. "It's not just Ted. It's not just the scars. It's the nightmares, it's Bellatrix, it's going back to work without Mad-Eye, and I'm sorry I'm taking it all out on you, really I am."

And with that, she takes a running jump, shrieking in surprise as she hits the water.

"Are you out of your senses?" Lupin calls down. "What if you'd _died_?"

"But I _didn't_. And neither will _you_. Come on; I bet you've missed it."

She's waiting for him down there, her skin luminous in the sliver of silver moonlight, her hair like fire on the sea.

And for the first time in seventeen years, Lupin leaps.

Freedom, he thinks, is the sound of air whistling in his ears as he hurtles toward the water. It's the salty taste in the back of his mouth as he surfaces, gasping for breath. It's her legs wrapped around his waist, her long, wet hair entangled around his fingers, her mouth on his.

"Ready to go home?"

He nods, not trusting himself to speak.

"Good, because I'm freezing my tits off in here."


	12. Decisions, Decisions

**Disclaimer: See first chapter.**

**12. Decisions, Decisions**

_2009_

Teddy's legs have turned to a rare combination of jelly and lead. He's not sure he can even lift them and yet, nor does he think they can support him. This would be terrifying enough without his father watching with sharp, shrewd eyes and expectations he won't talk about, but Teddy knows he has got in spades.

'Collins, Thomas' has been Sorted into Gryffindor and Teddy sort of wants to join him. He likes Tom; Tom, if blatant and even, on occasion, unapologetically rude, is good fun. But Gryffindor is his father's house and Teddy doesn't really have a preference as to where he ends up, but having a parent as his Head of House has not been highly anticipated. It's awkward enough that his father is even teaching here.

"Lupin, Ted."

His heart begins to beat three times as quickly. He can hear the hall fill with frenzied whispers. "_Lupin_? As in _Professor_ Lupin?" Half the school seemingly turns around to gawp at their teacher's child, evidence that he has a life outside of school. Teddy's stomach plummets to somewhere around his knees and he thinks he might be sick on the stool the Deputy Headmaster is ushering him toward.

Finally, his eyes glance upward and meet his father's. Lupin is leaning forward in his seat, not too far, but still failing to be in any way subtle. He manages a small, encouraging smile for his son and Ted drops his gaze without returning the gesture.

_Ah. Another Lupin._

"Have they all been Gryffindors then?"

_Not all of them, no._

"Oh. But, what, _most_ of them?"

_Your father was the first._

"So where _are_ you going to put me then?"

_It's a little early to decide, don't you think?_

"Well _you_ were the one lumping me in with a crowd."

_Your nerve belongs in Gryffindor, I must say._

Despite himself, Teddy laughs loud enough to be audible. Behind him, at the staff table, his father laughs too – nervously, under his breath.

_And you're not afraid of much, are you?_

Teddy shrugs before, realising the Hat cannot see him, clarifying that he's not found much to be afraid of.

"Don't know though," he admits. "My grandma's a bit scary. And crabs. I definitely don't like crabs. The way they shimmy along makes me sick."

_And flippant too._

"Like my mum? Oh, are you going to make me a Hufflepuff? I wouldn't mind Hufflepuff."

_Do you think you'd suit Hufflepuff?_

"Probably not, but here's the thing, right? I really don't want to be a Slytherin because I think people might be disappointed and I don't think I could be a Ravenclaw because I'm not really very logical, and if I was a Gryffindor, my Dad would feel almost as weird as I would. So I think Hufflepuff is probably the best option."

_Rather logical thinking for someone who thinks he's incapable of it._

"Cheers."

_You're not quite studious enough for Ravenclaw, Mr. Lupin._

"Told you."

_And you do know, don't you, that by virtue of being a Hufflepuff, you are required to work hard?_

He appears to be faced with a choice; Gryffindor or Slytherin. Dante, Ted thinks, could not have imagined this level of hell.

"And there's no way I can over-rule you? I mean, I'm a human being. You're a hat."

_And you really do not want to be a Slytherin? You sound like one._

"Definitely not!"

_Why?_

"Because…"

He doesn't want to tell the Hat that he thinks his father will be disappointed, or that he thinks his sister will laugh at him, or that every male figure he's ever looked up to has been a Gryffindor. He's too ashamed to admit that he's terrified he won't make friends there; his very existence will disgust some of them.

"Because I don't actually have the courage."

_But you've got the courage to admit it._

"GRYFFINDOR!"

And Teddy can only conclude that, sometimes, it's about what you _don't_ say.

He morphs his hair scarlet flecked with gold and, grinning, takes the seat beside Tom. Only once the Headmistress has delivered her speech does Teddy risk a glance at his father.

Lupin winks so subtly that Teddy thinks it might be some sort of twitch. He smiles back. Really, it's probably not going to be half as bad as he thought it would be.

* * *

_2012_

"You don't want to be a Gryffindor, seriously." Ted shakes his head violently. "I mean, don't get me wrong, his lessons are great because in his lessons, Dad is like a spider; _way_ more afraid of you than you are of him. But when you have to have major and I mean _major_ detentions with him, that's awful! When you do something that irks someone, they give you a detention and you show up at their office and no more is said. _Or_, if there is a sufficient amount of loathing, they'll send you to your Head of House and then Dad totally flips his lid."

Emma nods. She's been at the end of her father's wrath on considerably fewer occasions than her brother, but she knows enough to be sufficiently scared.

So when she finds herself subjected to the same torture Teddy was put through, she's relieved she has someone other than her father to look at. Teddy's is the only smiling face.

Deep down, despite Teddy's warnings, Emma's not entirely sure where she wants to be Sorted. She's not done a great deal of thinking about it.

Fortunately, neither she nor the Hat are forced to debate the issue. It has barely touched her head before it calls out,

"RAVENCLAW!"

* * *

"Well," says Teddy, days later, when they're alone beside the lake, "I'm actually pretty jealous. I was sat on that stool so long that they call me a Hatstall."

"So we average out at roughly the same time as everybody else."

Teddy raises an eyebrow. "Em, even though I was there for an extraordinary amount of time, I don't think it touching a couple of your stray hairs before deciding, balances us out."

"Nah, nor do I. I was just trying to make you feel better. It can't be easy finding out you're so useless, it doesn't know _where_ to put you."

"Right. That's it. You're going to get it."


	13. Baby

**Disclaimer: See first chapter.**

**A/N: I've had a few days off. That's why there have been so many updates. I will back off soon. **

**This one was supposed to be **_**very**_** different. It went through various drafts – Lupin, Tonks, and baby Ted, Ted and baby Emma, Andromeda and Ted, and then finally, when I was at my wits end, I visited family last night and I was turned into an Emma.**

**Also, Lara140112, that'll be the next chapter.**

**13. Baby**

_2018_

Ted still lives in South Devon; not quite as close to the coast as his parents, not even in Hope Cove, but he's not far away, renting a small flat above a chocolate shop in Kingsbridge. His landlord is a little afraid of him. Since securing a trainee Healer position in St. Mungo's, Ted has at least rid himself of acid green hair and a lip piercing which never suited his heart shaped face, but he still keeps odd hours and blares heavy metal from a gramophone.

He visits his parents and sixteen-year-old sister every Sunday for lunch, a meal that he thinks his father translates as 'small scale religious feast'. He brought his girlfriend last week and it was obvious she had never before seen three heaped serving bowls of boiled, mashed, and roast potatoes demolished by six people.

Today is a Thursday and they're not expecting him. Emma is home for the holidays, bringing James with her. He's not happy about this, but at least he likes James. At least, at _last_, here is a boy he can intimidate.

"_Ted_?" His mother is sitting amongst piles of paperwork littered around the dining table. His sudden arrival terrifies her. She is guarantor of his flat and Ted's tired and terrified eyes are not an encouraging sign. Something, she just _knows_, has caught fire.

"Sorry." Ted takes the seat opposite her, but he can no longer meet her eyes over her own organised chaos. "I just feel a bit sick really."

"Are you all right? What have you eaten? Because I warned you about mustard and piccalilli. I _warned_ you."

Ted rolls his eyes. "I delivered my first baby today."

Tonks pushes the pile of parchment separating her from her son, to one side. "How did it go?"

"All right. Pretty well. I mean, it was Erin's so…"

Tonks clicks her tongue sympathetically. "How is she?"

"Oh God, yeah, Erin's fine. _I_ was close to fainting, but Erin was reading the paper when I got there. Off her tits on pain relief, but nevertheless."

"Give her our best, yeah?"

Ted nods. "Of course I will. Is Emma about?"

Tonks frowns. "In her room, I think. Why?"

"What about her fancy piece? Where's he?"

Tonks laughs. "Fancy piece! He's with your dad, going over his O.W.L. exam."

Ted briefly raises his eyebrows in acknowledgement. "Why? Did he fail? Is my baby sister shagging a loser?"

"Nobody is shagging anybody under my roof."

Ted grins wickedly. "I'd no idea I was an immaculate conception, Mum. You ought to have told me. I'd have gone to Communion and everything."

Tonks nods toward the door. "On your bike."

On his way to see Emma, he stops into the former nursery beside his parents' room. James is biting his nails and nodding so often that his head seems to be in perpetual motion. His father is peering over the exam paper, flicking through the pages, occasionally turning it so that James can read his notes as he makes his point.

Ted clears his throat and as his father's eyes flicker toward the door, his face lights up. In his early teens, his relationship with his father had been tempestuous; Ted had not taken 'abandonment' lightly. He's not entirely sure how he could once so vehemently hate a man who looks at him like he's the messiah.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" asks Lupin, getting to his feet with a small smile and a funny little glint in his eyes. "Are you here to borrow money?"

"Nope."

"Eat me out of house and home?"

"Nope."

"Steal the family silver?"

"Well, I am quite the Mundungus Fletcher when I need to be, I must say." Ted grins. "Actually, I'm here to see my baby sister."

"And," she calls from across the hall, "the family silver is _mine_. Grammy promised it to me."

"Oh good; she's in. Thought you might want to know, Dad, Erin's had the baby."

Lupin beams. "Boy or a girl? We must send a card too."

"Girl – April. Tom's over the moon, or at least he seemed to be. When I left, he was just coming round. We offered to let him cut the umbilical cord before he fainted, but I thought he lasted an admirably long time. I was ready to pass out the minute it dawned on me that I had my head between my best friend's legs and this bloodied head that looked like the sort of thing you'd find living on Pluto, was being pushed in my direction." He glances over his father's shoulder and nods a greeting. "You all right, James? You're looking a bit peaky, mate."

James smiles nervously in response. "No, no. I'm fine. Just trying not to imagine it."

Ted seizes this and pounces. "So it's an effective contraceptive, this story, is it?"

Lupin rolls his eyes. "I'd like to get back to this exam, if you don't mind? I do have a life outside of this office and I should like to be ready to live it by eight o'clock. Send my congratulations, won't you?"

"Is Loveland involved?"

"I have plans, yes." Lupin resumes his seat. "I thought you were here to see Emma?"

"Oh I _am_. James here is a bonus. Why bother with a counter-curse when you can snap the wand?" Ted stares James down until he shifts awkwardly in his seat. "Good evening, Mr. Potter. I hope we shan't have to have this conversation a second time."

"Yes," says Lupin, picking up his quill and underlining an entire paragraph, "you're not the only one. Now get out of my office; you're starting to sound like a Bond villain."

"You'll thank me one day, Dad. In nine months, when the spare room is silent and you're sleeping the untroubled slumber of a father secure in the knowledge that his daughter is terrified by the very idea of procreation, you'll thank me."

"_Goodnight_, Ted."

* * *

"What would _you _want with the silver?"

Ted has not even knocked before the assault begins. He taps the door as a gesture of goodwill, though he's not sure why; Emma has never once knocked on his closed doors before barging in. He can't understand how people like his parents can raise a child who has no concept of privacy. Emma walks in on people's business, joins their conversations, and thinks secrets are public knowledge.

"Oh for goodness sake, come in. I knew you were there, why bother?"

Ted closes the door behind him and hovers beside her desk. Her room is painted blue with bronze birds adorning the ceiling. Her House scarf is wrapped around her wardrobe handles. Her Quidditch robes almost hide the Firebolt 360 she pleaded for last Christmas, onto which her friends have carved _Lightening Lupin_. Their father would have a fit if he found out there was so much as a twig out of place. Ted's not been in here often. He's not seen the photographs she takes and pins on her walls. Emma and her gaggle of girlfriends wave up at him from various locations. His sister is extraordinarily clever and genuinely beautiful in the air, but he thinks even she will admit, she's not very photogenic. Pretty enough, as sisters go, but she _does_ take a terrible photograph.

But there's a lovely one of her with James and Ted can't help but stare blatantly.

"There's nothing really going on, you know," she says, following his gaze. "I don't think I want to be with him for the rest of my life or anything so you've no need to tell him grisly midwifery stories. I've got my own contraceptive; it's called common sense."

Ted shrugs. "Sorry. I just…well, you know. I'm your big brother and as such, it is my job, my purpose in life, to ensure that you _never_ get any."

Emma grins. "Between you, Dad, and God, I never will, will I?"

"That's the plan," says Ted, taking a seat on the bed beside her. "The three of us hold meetings, there's a society dinner next week, and –" His voice is muffled by the pillow Emma flings at him.

"You're a dick."

He smiles softly. "I'm just saying that, when I was your age, there was so much pressure to lose your virginity and, maybe I shouldn't be telling you this, but I lost mine to entirely the wrong person and I regret it. I don't want you to regret things like that and I also won't relish having to beat the shit out of an unsuitable man."

Emma rolls her eyes, the spitting image of Lupin as she does so. "Mum's already had this little chat with me. _Dad_ even tried. That was terrifying. 'You know, sometimes, Emma, the person you fall in love with isn't always the person you think they are, and my first girlfriend turned out to be a bitch.'"

Ted raises one eyebrow disbelievingly. "Dad used the word 'bitch' in front of you?"

"Well no, but that was the general picture he was painting." Emma collapses onto her pillows. "What brought all this on anyway?"

"Tom asked me if I'd be godfather to his daughter."

Emma scoffs. "Stop treating me like a guinea pig and, shit as I think Erin will be at this sort of thing, leave these discussions to her mother."

Ted gets to his feet with a sigh. "Do you want to know something?"

"No."

"I think I'm a bit worried that my life is on pause while my friends' are on fast forward. Do you ever feel like that?"

Emma shakes her head. "But I don't think your friends having an accidental baby means you need to have a mid-life crisis. Chill the fuck out, you're only twenty. Have you told Weasley you're getting broody? Do you need _me_ to?"

"Piss off!"

"And stay away from my boyfriend. You're like a turquoise pitbull."


End file.
